Mead - Freeman Debate

Margaret Mead

Derek Freeman

Freelisting Exercise:
List the factors involved in the Mead - Freeman controversy

Freelists -- Steve Borgatti

1. If Mead's research is incorrect does that change anthropology as a whole since she plays such an inportant role in cultural anthrpology?
   
   
2. Did Mead miss an important aspect of the culture she was studying (teasing, joking) that affected the results of her entire reaserch project?
   
   
3. Could it be that the people did not lie but that later they thought it might reflect badly on them so said they were lying?
   
   
4. If this happened to Mead could the same mistake be made by Freeman if Mead didn't make the "mistake" first. The people that each person talked to could also have a major impact on the outcome of the research?
   
   
5. Was Mead in a position, assuming Freedman's reaserch is true, to learn the truth about the community? Being a woman she never would have had access to the tribal councel or the men that Freedmen had. Perhaps she did learn some truths about the female community that Freedman never would have found.
   
   
6. Does this change mean that people are not perfectable biologicaly? If her research on Samoa make her conclusion incorrect on a whole?
   
   
7. Is Freeman more interested in getting the facts straight or getting an ego boost as the man who showed up the great Mead?
   
   
8. Academic ego is rampant here... Mead shows a good deal of it herself in never responding as she feared she had miscued. (Note on #7: Freeman claimed to be a heretic who was also right.) In short, the argument has wandered away from the pursuit of truth, and into the question of who is RIGHT.
   
   
9. In adition to the fact that Mead and Freeman studied two different gender and age groups, they studied at two different times. Cultures are constantly changeing. There is no doubt that the cuture modernising after WWII changed what would be told to anthropologists.
   
   
10. At the time Anthropology was a new field and Mead was a rookie so it isnot out of the question that she could be wrong. However, plently of studies since have supported her findings that nurture plays an important role, so it is not like she was totally wrong.
    
    
11. What effect do factors outside the research such as: the climate of anthropological discourse, the search for personal merit, personal affinities and hostilites etc. have on this debate?
    
    
12. Margaret Mead is great.